When You Come A Knockin'
by Nesserz
Summary: Ginny muses over the different people in her life categorised by the way they knock on her door.


When You Come A Knockin' - Nesserz.

A/N: Just a little something I wrote the other day on a whim.

Enjoy. )

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You can tell a lot about a person from the way they knock on a door. Ginny Weasley knew this first hand as she had analysed knocks since she was a child. It was a strange habit that she had picked up from somewhere, she wasn't exactly sure where, but she could tell each family member's knocks apart, except those of Fred and George's as they didn't tend to knock, they preferred to barge in, and since becoming of age, appaparated in. Everyone else, though, she knew their knocks. Ron's was the easiest and the one that she heard most often as a child and then as a teenager.

His was simple, plain, yet full of meaning, just like the converstations that usually followed one of his knocks after he walked in the room, sometimes without even waiting for a customary 'come in' from Ginny. She often wondered why he even bothered. She supposed he was trying to be polite...something that when it came to Hermione, wasn't something he could accomplish very well, not without speaking to Ginny first at least. She didn't like to blow her own horn, but she was rather good with relationship advice. Of course it helped being best friends with Hermione and knowing what she liked in a person. Such things that she relayed to Ron that he'd have been able to find out himself if he'd bothered to ask.

Ginny sighed, staring at her bedroom door. He used to knock so often, to talk to her about anything and everything but that tended to stop once Hermione and Harry came over to spend the summer with the Weasley family. She missed the times when it was just them, when he used to knock and tell her that his biggest problem was Fred and George kicking water in his face while he'd been swimming or putting sand down his trousers. Over time his problems had increased, first year he'd been bursting to tell her about fighting a Troll and saving a bushy haired buck-toothed bookworm, whose name was something ubsurd like 'Her-mi-onie'.

There had been many more instances that the name 'Hermione' came up in conversation throughout the next few years. Fourth year was the most common. During his fourth year, he'd knocked to tell her how annoyed he'd been at the prospect of having Yule Ball's during one's schooling. Ginny knew though, that it was more due to the fact that he was annoyed he hadn't been able to go with the girl he'd wanted. She wasn't stupid. He may have been perhaps, she'd gone as far as to smack him upside the head as he'd turned to leave her room. He'd given her a slightly annoyed look but said nothing, nothing because she knew that he knew he deserved it.

He'd knocked many times after the Yule Ball, asking for Ginny's opinion about girls in a round about sort of way. He'd never ask her outright what to do in a particular situation, he'd rant and rave about how 'insufferable' _she _was, and would always leave Ginny's room with the solution to the problem. The most common: Just treat her nicely, you daft git.

Fifth year and sixth year led to less tap tapping from Ron. It seemed he didn't need her advice anymore. He'd either started to listen to it, or had found someone else to gain worldly wisdom from. Ron didn't often knock on her door anymore, they didn't often have brotherly/sisterly chats anymore which made her rather sad. She'd always counted on them talking about the things they were going through. She knew why he didn't knock much anymore though. He was too busy spending his time with Hermione. Something, Ginny mused was rather ironic as at one point he couldn't talk to her without yelling at her and telling her she was insufferable. He had knocked on her door during summer at this point, letting out his frustrations by pulling the head off Ginny's stuffed Kneazle. She'd frowned at him and told him to be himself but not to yell at Hermione about Krum - that was his biggest problem, getting all high and mighty over a git like Krum that Hermione didn't even fancy. If Ron had just listened to Ginny earlier, he'd have found out many things about Hermione that would have helped him on his quest to 'Win her heart', a proclamation that had promply made Ginny collapse into a fit of giggles. Ron had turned red at her outburst and folded his arms across his chest, claiming that it 'wasn't funny'. Ginny begged to differ.

Just as Ginny was resigning herself to the fact that Ron had finally grown up and didn't need her help anymore, she heard a knock at the door, a knock that she'd only heard a few times, but one that made her heart beat faster than any knock her family members owned. It was an interesting knock, one that was a quick succession of three taps, a knock that was much like the person behind it - quick to put themselves out there, and just as quick to retreat if they thought they were to be rejected. Ginny jumped off her bed immediately after hearing this knock and found, as she'd expected, already turning away from the door, Harry Potter.

Harry visited her when he had something on his mind that he wanted an expert opinion on, at least, that's what Ginny prefered to think, she always pushed the thought that it was due to Ron and Hermione that he sought her out. He sat down at the chair that she kept at her desk and stood up again, plucking a fluffy orange cushion out from under him and threw it at Ginny who caught it laughing as she tucked her legs under her as she sat upon her bed. She looked at him as he settled himself down and leaned his chin in his hand, leaning on the back of the chair that he'd turned around.

Ginny hummed happily, glad to have some company to stop her thinking about how things used to be. Harry looked at her, an eyebrow raised and she stared back at him and sighed, flopping backwards onto her bed and he laughed. With an exagerated pummelling of the cushion that Harry had thrown at her, she proceeded to tell him that she'd been thinking of how things used to be and how she needed to realise that they weren't that way anymore. Harry nodded, talking about how his childhood had seemed so dramatic at the time but now when he looked back at it, he'd have given anything to be playing with Dudley's forgotten toy soldiers instead of worrying how the final battle between him and You-Know-Who was going to end.

Ginny felt slightly relieved due to the fact that she wasn't the only one feeling slightly irritated by the changes going on around her. Of course, she wasn't facing what could possibly be her end due to some evil wizard. She was analysing people's knocks. She smiled, thinking of how silly she was being as Harry rapped his knuckles on her desk, trying to get her attention. It did.

"One knuckle," she mused outloud to which he frowned, and laughingly asked 'What?' she rolled her eyes and explained.

"You knock with one knuckle, Ron knocks with one too," he merely looked at her and she laughed at the look on his face.

"Okay," he said with a shake of his head and she slid off her bed and knocked on her dresser to show him how she knocked. "I use my full hand, see? You can tell a lot about a person by the way they knock," she said, feeling slightly foolish for telling Harry this.

"Oh yeah? How so?" he asked, giving her an amused look to which she blushed but took his hand in hers, adopting a misty voice much like the one Professor Trelawney used when reading palms. Laughing she dropped his hand and her heart rate sped up at the look on his face - was it disappointment? She hoped so. She smiled and spoke to him ernestly, telling him what she believed about his knock, that it was so much like his demeanor, that it, like he was afraid of being put out to be recieived by others. Upon hearing this, Harry nodded, drawing his hands to himself, to place his chin in them, all the better to look at her.

She flushed slightly under his gaze. He smiled and announced that he should probably go and find out where Ron and Hermione had gotten too and that he'd see her at dinner. Feeling slightly dejected that nothing more had come of their meeting, Ginny nodded as he left and closed her door behind her. A second later however, a knock was to be heard. Ginny's heart skipped.

"Harry?" she called curiously. He stuck his head back around the door.

"Just checking you know what you're talking about," he said, a cheeky grin on his face. Ginny threw her cushion at him.

Smiling, she found herself hoping that he would come knocking on her door again some time soon. Perhaps, Ginny thought, change wasn't too bad, so Ron had stopped coming to her for advice, Harry was just beginning, sliding off her bed and heading towards the stairs she decided that she could certainly deal with Harry coming to her as often as he liked.

She closed her door with a snap and knocked on it with her own knuckles for good measure.

No, change really wasn't that bad at all.


End file.
